Careful Mistakes

by Joyce Mandeville

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Women's Fiction; Romance

Synopsis

Jilly is facing a crisis - several, in fact. Long-widowed and 40-something, she has a mother-in-law from hell, a loving but terminally-ill father, and a daughter whom, despite being her pride and joy, she cannot stop fretting about. Then, all in one day, her father dies and Chloe reveals - in typically shocking fashion - that she is pregnant. Too much at once for some, but Jilly is a fighter and knows that she is surrounded by people she loves - including best friend Sue, wayward Chloe and the wonderful, sexy Elliott, Jilly's partner in lust and life. With everything going on, suddenly, Jilly feels the time has come to take stock and create a future of her own . . .

Release date: June 5, 2014

Publisher: Sphere

Print pages: 191

Sample

Until you’ve sat a death watch you can’t understand how exciting a trip to the airport can be. I pulled out of the palace
gate feeling fifty pounds lighter and ten years younger.


When someone has been dying for weeks, death fills a chair at the table, uses its own towels, and sets all the clocks. Death
decides if anyone in the house will sleep, what they will eat, what they will read, and death decides if anyone will have
clean underwear.


My father, the Bishop, had announced to me, and to everyone else, that the cancer which had attacked his system three years
before was now beyond treatment. He used the last of his strength writing letters, making lists, and receiving uncounted visitors.
He had remained cheerful, alert, even funny until three weeks before when he had lapsed into a coma.


I left the palace knowing he was watched over. His nurse, Laura, was a sweet-faced, hardheaded, lapsed Roman Catholic from
Belfast. She often told my father if she ever became a believer again she would become an Episcopalian because of him. She
told him she liked the idea of a priest and bishop having children he could admit to. In addition to Laura, I could count on at least two to three members of various parishes in the tiny private chapel praying
for his soul and ready reception into that Anglican paradise he seemed so sure of.


Chloe, my daughter, was coming home for spring break. She wasn’t coming home for the death watch, but I was glad the two coincided.
Although she loved her grandfather, at eighteen her world had pushed far beyond the Bishop’s palace. It seemed right that
she would see him die. I wanted her to see the normalcy of a good man having a good end.


Chloe had never been comfortable discussing death or its rituals. Unlike her peers, she had an aversion to horror films and
books. When she was little she was always something pretty for Halloween. She never went into the haunted house ride at the
fair. She didn’t play with a ouija board at summercamp, and she always left the campfire when the ghost stories started. She
would never visit the family crypt on her father’s birthday, though I never knew why I felt I had to be there anyway.


Rick would be proud of Chloe now. He was so smitten with her, with being a husband, being a father. Sometimes I’ve been almost
jealous of Rick. In Chloe’s eyes he was perfect. The father who, had he lived, would have shielded her from every scraped
knee, every punishment, every broken heart. The father who would have let her soar, unbound by a Bishop’s home and a widow’s
fears.


The connection between mother and child never ends. We study the moods and phases of our children from the first flutter in
the womb. We study the eyebrow, the shoulder, the toss of a hand, and we know.


She is tall, so I saw the top of her head first. Tawny curls, Rick’s hair grown long, framing a Maxfield Parrish face. The
long-limbed elegant nymph of sentimental posters geared out in khaki and wool. The eyes, green and round with fear, gave her away. Chloe wore the fear like a scarf wrapped around her face. She walked toward me, and I tried to decide
if I should pretend her fear was for her grandfather.


Pushing past slower travelers, she walked into my arms, and I felt her go limp against me. ‘Honey, what’s wrong?’ I needed
to know. There seemed no point in pretending.


‘I just want to go home. I’ve only got carry-on luggage. Just take me home.’ Her voice was pitched higher than usual and sounded
shrill to my ears.


‘Sure. Let me take one of those.’ I took a bag off her shoulder and elbowed my way through the airport crowd toward the door.
It slid open with an electronic clunk. I glanced back to make sure she was behind me and smiled at her. The corner of her
mouth twitched in response, then she looked away.


We walked into the bright sunlight and I slid the sunglasses from the top of my head to my face. ‘How was your flight?’ I
started fishing. Eighteen years of mothering the girl had taught me how to draw information from her.


‘It was a flight. Same oh, same oh. I’m sorry, Mom, I forgot to ask about Grandpa. What’s going on?’ She scanned the parking
lot, looking for the car, I assumed.


‘The car is over there. We can talk in the car.’ I walked quickly, feeling her behind me. I needed to gather my wits. After
a separation, she always talked a mile a minute, was always excited to be home. Even with the old man dying, the prospect
of home should have charged her, lightened her step.


I opened the trunk of the car and helped her toss her bags in, then unlocked both sides from my door and slid into the driver’s
seat. I put on my seatbelt and turned toward Chloe. I touched the roll of hair at the back of my neck and glanced in the rearview
mirror. An old habit that reminds me who I am.


‘You asked about your grandfather. He is still in a coma. I’m told we are no longer looking at days but hours. You haven’t
had any calls. Now, I need to know right now, what’s wrong?’ I hated the sound of my voice, probing at her, wheedling for
information.


‘You’ve got to know I didn’t want this to happen. I never wanted to hurt you. I don’t know what to do.’ She grabbed her arms
and leaned forward, sobbing.


I rolled down my window to let fresh air into the car. I reached over and kissed her cheek, fighting an urge to scream. ‘How
far along are you?’


She didn’t look at me, but she stopped crying with a start. She drew a few, ragged breaths. ‘I’m two weeks late. I know I’m
pregnant. I took three different tests. I started throwing up yesterday. I got sick twice on the flight. How could I have
been so stupid?’


‘Jesus Christ, Chloe. You were supposed to be the one bright spot in my day. How did this happen? How many times have I given
you the responsible sexuality speech?’ Dear God, why now? My father is dying and my eighteen-year-old is pregnant. Give me
strength. I reached over and patted her hand. ‘Listen, I’m sorry I said that. We need to get back. I love you, and you haven’t
hurt or disappointed me.’ I love you and I could wring your neck right now. When this is over, I’m going to lock you in the
attic until menopause – yours, not mine.


I pulled Dad’s old Jag out of the parking lot, grateful to have something to do with my hands, someplace to focus my gaze.
I wasn’t shocked. Men, women, sex, and babies. It was the way things were supposed to be. Just not for Chloe, not yet.


Chloe was an exceptional girl. Brilliant – a college senior at eighteen, tawny and sleek, charming, kind. An only child raised
by a widowed mother and scholarly grandparents, she was wise beyond her years. She was scheduled to begin work on her Master’s in Anthropology in July, to spend the next twelve months in Oaxaxo, Mexico. This wasn’t supposed to happen
to Chloe. This had happened to Chloe.


‘Chloe, I’ve always put you first, and I know you need me to do that now, but I just can’t. We’ve got to put your grandfather
first right now. We don’t expect him to last the next twenty-four hours. When he’s gone …’ I felt myself beginning to choke.
‘When he’s gone, I’ll help you look at everything. We will find help for you. Do you understand?’ Death was my new speciality.
I fancied that I had a gift for it. I adjusted my driving gloves as I steered the car toward home. I had begun taking care
of my skin as I watched my father’s deteriorate, to mottle and bruise.


‘I understand. My timing is extremely shitty. I know what you’ve been going through. I’m sorry.’ She began to cry again. For
herself, for me, or for him?


‘Don’t worry about me. Dad has made this pretty easy for me. I’ve got good help, and he has been an amazingly good patient.
It’s been very bittersweet actually.’ It has been harder than hell. I haven’t slept for more than three hours at a time for
two months. I’m tired and sad and my daughter is pregnant. On the plus side, my hands look pretty good.


We drove in silence through the spring countryside. Patches of snow clumped in shady spots. A few crocuses and snowdrops had
forced themselves through the muddy ground. The trees were still bare but in a few days the buds would begin. Within a month
the hills would be green under a canopy of pale, young leaves.


‘Will he know I’m there?’ Good girl. She was shifting gears, pulling out, if even for a few minutes.

‘The hearing is supposedly the last thing to go. Laura and I tell everyone to speak to him as though he can hear. Maybe something
gets through. I like to think so. I’m only letting three or four of his oldest friends in. Laura has been incredible. She takes care of bathing, linens, that sort of thing. Technically, she works the day shift, but she often
stays until about eight in the evening. I’m on my own at night, but there is really nothing left to do then but give him injections.’
No longer the daughter, I am now the midwife of death.


She looked out the window, seeming to ignore what I’d just said. ‘Sometimes I really miss Connecticut.’ Chloe was at U C Berkeley
near San Francisco. Three years before, she’d wanted to be as far away as possible from New England.


‘You can always come back for grad school. They’ve got Anthropology here too.’

Neither of us said anything. Because of a quickly dividing clump of cells, her future had changed forever. Birth or abortion.
Abortion or birth. Problems are temporary. Solutions are permanent.


She sat up straighter as I turned down the road toward the palace. She reminded me of one of the dogs. Glad to go, but thrilled
to be back.


Chloe and I moved into the palace when she was eighteen months old. She remembers nothing of her father’s house. My father
had come to tell me that Rick had been killed on the thruway. He filled a diaper bag, picked up Chloe, and put us in the back
seat of his car.


My mother was in Manhattan when she heard the news. We arrived at the palace at the same time, and she led me to my old room.
Chloe’s nursery was waiting for her, since she was a frequent visitor. I’m not sure when or even if I decided to stay. I sold
Rick’s house, redecorated my room, and fell into the rhythms of my girlhood home. My parents grew old, and the house seemed
more and more my own. When Mother died she left it to me.


Old timers refer to the palace as the Wolden Place. My mother was a Wolden. The Woldens have been here since before the Revolution. A comfortable, respectable family. My mother used to say that the Woldens had enough money, but not
too much. We didn’t have enough money to automatically be crazy or beautiful. My mother was neither beautiful nor crazy. While
at Radcliffe she had fallen in love with a handsome theological student from Kansas. He had a scholarship, and she had a trust
fund. She was a debutante and he was ambitious. It proved to be an excellent match.


When my father was ordained, it was a simple matter for my grandfather, a well-connected, well-respected Episcopalian, to
have my father appointed to the cathedral ten miles away from the Wolden Place. Fifteen years later my father was elected
Bishop, and the Wolden Place became the Bishop’s palace.


The palace is actually one of the few bishop’s palaces that even vaguely lives up to the name. The average bishop lives on
a fairly modest income and housing allowance. My father was fortunate and wise enough to marry a wife with a handsome home
and income. The palace is a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old Gothic revival. It has six bedrooms, four baths, and servants’
quarters. Typical of its era, it has fourteen stained-glass windows, a wine cellar, and an annual heating budget that rivals
the gross national product of some third world countries. The house sits in the middle of a five-acre park surrounded by a
six-foot iron fence.


When my grandparents were alive all five acres were under careful cultivation, but I had given all but a third of an acre
up to nature. I could look out the windows of the palace and think about the wild things living inside my fence. Furry folk
setting up housekeeping in my grandmother’s overgrown maze and herb garden. Most houses like ours had become mortuaries, condos,
or had simply been torn down. The families could no longer afford them, or they had scattered and the big houses were no longer needed. I suppose I’d hung on because I could.


Almost as soon as I pressed the remote button to open the gate, I heard the dogs begin to bark. My parents spent over forty
years trying to create a new breed of dog. The goal was to combine the British collie types: Aussies, Borders, and roughs,
with various retriever types, mostly Labs. Their efforts resulted in Episcopal homes throughout the diocese being filled with
good-natured mutts with slightly comical faces. My father always had at least one dog with him wherever he went. I used to
tease him that he had successfully bred dogs that could sleep under any desk, in any sacristy.


Meg and Russ were the latest in a long line of keepers. I learned to walk by pulling myself up on Meg’s great, great, great,
great-grandsire, Robbie. As I was an only child, the dogs had been my sibling substitutes, and I loved them dearly. They had
served the same purpose for my daughter. She laughed when she saw them running for the car.


As we climbed out of the car, we were besieged with tails and tongues. Chloe squatted down and started kissing their necks.
Russ, the young male, was so overcome with joy he started circling the car and barking. Chloe looked like a happy twelve-year-old
sitting on the ground. In a minute or two the dogs settled down, panting, goofy looks on their faces. We were home and their
world was complete. Lucky dumb mutts.


‘Welcome home, Chloe.’ I gave her a hand to pull her up and hugged her to me. ‘We’ll get your things later. We better check
on your grandfather.’


Chloe started up the stairs, and I followed her. At the landing I grabbed her hand to stop her. ‘He looks different. He’s
very thin, and his circulation is shutting down. Talk to him as you normally would, just in case he can hear you.’ She nodded
her head and opened the door.


This room was my parents’ bedroom for their whole married life. When my mother died, no changes were made other than removing
her clothes from the closets and drawers. Six months before I’d had the big four poster moved into the basement storage area
and brought in a hospital bed. Six months later I hadn’t adjusted to the change. The bedroom, like the rest of the house,
was filled with Wolden family furniture and carpets. We don’t change things, we replace them. I hated the chrome and formica
monstrosity that had taken the place of my parents’ bed. I even hated the bed linens. Mother had always insisted on beautiful
duvets and counterpanes. This bed was covered with cheap cotton blankets that were easy to launder.


He looked so tiny. Never a very big man, he had shrunk to less than one hundred pounds. His silver hair had faded and thinned,
its texture brittle. His face was mottled, his hands bluish. That had changed since the morning. Death was quickening its
pace. I wished he would die right then and get it over with. I hoped he would never leave me.


Laura sat in an easy chair by the window. She was knitting what seemed like the hundredth sweater since she had arrived three
months before. ‘It’. . .